


Self Made

by Crows_Feet



Series: Home [2]
Category: Archive 81 (Podcast)
Genre: Asexual Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-typical swearing, Coming Out, M/M, None of these are particularly relevant but this is an exercise in Projection, Trans Male Character, Trans Nicholas Water
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:47:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26388895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crows_Feet/pseuds/Crows_Feet
Summary: He builds himself up, out. He grows into his bones and his voice drops several years too late, (but it drops). He cuts away the parts of himself that do not fit and creates himself in his own image. Nicholas is nothing if not a self-made man.(A study in Nicholas Waters)
Relationships: Static Man/Nicholas Waters
Series: Home [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1917883
Comments: 13
Kudos: 42





	Self Made

Nicholas leans early that the only way to get the things he wants is to grab onto them and not let go. He chooses his name at fourteen, holds it tight until he’s ready to let others see. He makes it his core, builds himself out from it, and says, “Call me Nicholas, please,” as politely as he can whenever someone gets it wrong.

Nicholas builds himself outwards and wears his name like armour.

It takes him fourteen years to realise he’s a boy, and another to realise he’s gay, but much longer to realise that he’s also asexual. It’s barely a passing thought, in the end, this deep and insightful look into himself. He studies the thought appraisingly for a moment, nods, then carefully adds it to the parts of himself he holds tightly.

He’s soft spoken, and academic, which gives him all too much leeway in getting out of trouble at school. Teachers do not see him and think _problem_ , this helpful boy who is so hungry for information. He’s polite, but odd, strange and with little in common with his peers. He teaches himself how to talk to people; (this is how you apologise when someone is upset with you; this is how you thank someone). He hoards books like he needs them to breathe, studies each word carefully and holds them tight, folds them into himself. He reliably gets out of class a couple of times a week by helping out in the library all throughout high school and nobody gives it a second thought. (On quiet days, he squirrels himself away behind the last bookshelf, and by the time he graduates he’s read his way through every last book in the library).

He builds himself up, out. He grows into his bones and his voice drops several years too late (but it drops). He cuts away the parts of himself that do not fit, and creates himself in his own image. Nicholas is nothing if not a self-made man.

He keeps his head down in college, acquires boyfriends and then exes, gets a TA position in post grad. The kids look up to him the way nobody ever really has, and Nicholas feels like he could be home for the first time in his life. (Nick built himself, but he did it alone).

Chris enters his life in a whirlwind after their father’s death, all crooked smiles and sarcastic wit. They clash, these two opposing personalities, but they fit at each other’s side in a way that’s novel, in a way that _works_. Chris seems at home wherever she is, wherever her boots and backpack are; breathes easy and cheerfully pushes into his life. (Nicholas has never felt enough at home within himself to do that – he puts down roots before he lets himself breathe).

After Michael Waters dies, Nicholas pulls books down from the shelves in his father’s study and pours over them out of habit rather than actual interest. After a reference to tapes scrawled in an old notebook he comes across the rituals. These spells, this power he’s never known about – it’s intoxicating. He’s drunk on excitement, and never been more terrified.

The two of them sleep in motel room after motel room; they prepare. 

Chris drowns, throws up tape recorders. They fall into a world of magic and ritual that is pretentious enough for Nicholas to feel at home in the words of. They’re not like the books he’s used to – they’re lists, instructions;

_Find a room with wooden floors, and remove all carpets and furniture from it. Collect salt from the nearest ocean. Gather a pomegranate, a wineglass, and a knife both of you have used to cut meat._

Chris eats a goat heart. Nick throws one up, and agony flares in his leg. Not for the first time, he wonders if all this is worth it. (He takes one of his father’s old canes, and the weight of it is heavy in his hand.)

They run from Aleister, from the Cult, and Nick shaves the moustache he’s been desperately trying to grow out. Static man crackles into existence in their shitty motel room and Nick tries not to look like he’s afraid. (It’s a lot easier as soon as he realises this super-powered being, this non-Euclidean entity he can’t look at without his eyes hurting, seems more human than much of the cult.) He opens himself to the possibility of trust with Static man, but that is not the same thing as friendship.

Nick is good at rituals – his pedantic tendencies that frustrated people back home are useful here. Words have power, and Nicholas has always loved words.

Nicholas grabs hold of the power with both hands; pulls it close. (He doesn’t hold tight enough to his sister.) Chris goes on the dream journey alone, and comes back… different. Her hair’s white and grown out past her shoulders – she can’t stop twisting her fingers through it like if she pulls hard enough she’ll _remember_. She seems older, and takes longer to respond when he calls “Christine?” across the motel room.

She’s grown without him, and he tries not to hold it against her. (They don’t quite fit together anymore – there’s a disjoint somewhere he can’t pinpoint, and he can’t hold her close enough to stop her drifting away. It hurts).

His father comes back– Well. He wasn’t really gone, so back isn’t the right word to use. His father _returns_ , and lies and lies and lies. Mentally, Nicholas removes him from the list of people he holds close. (The list is getting short). His father wants to take Nick’s body and make it his own, but Nicholas hasn’t worked this hard on Becoming to give himself away like that.

His father comes back; Chris leaves. Nick pretends both of those things don’t hurt. He kills his father, the man who left, the man who manipulated, and pretends that doesn’t hurt, too. He made up his mind a long time ago – Nicholas is built only for himself. He refuses to break himself down for others.

His hands shake; he puts them in his pockets.

He thinks about the power he’s been able to hold the past few weeks. He thinks about Static Man, about promises he should have kept. He teaches himself to be powerful and tells himself it’s to help others.

Nick’s hands shake; he buries them in magic. He’s lost all the people he cares about, so he gets into a car with a man made of static, and they drive.

Rituals have a purpose. Static man wants a body. Nick isn’t sure what he wants. (Maybe just not to be alone).

The road goes strange, and Nicholas thinks he should be more excited to learn about this new world than he is. Static man laughs with flashing white canines in the passenger seat, and Nick starts to feel a little less empty.

They drive.

The radio advertises teeth, plays radiator sounds, then brings threats. They run from the Trucker. Nicholas hasn’t come this far just to turn around.

(He remembers telling Chris about something like this, back before. Sunk cost fallacy – that _we can’t turn back now_ feeling tugging at his chest, that _we’ve come so far_ , that _I’m not giving up_ thought that won’t leave his head. Despite what Chris might think, Nick doesn’t give up easy. He braces himself, finds handholds, keeps his head down. Nick is good at surviving.)

Michael Waters tarnished this place, the way he did with everything he touched. (“Not us,” Chris would say later. “We’re both pretty and smart as hell”). Nicholas wonders if he’ll ever finish cleaning up his father’s messes.

(His father’s old cane is in the backseat, just waiting for Nick’s bad leg to flare up. The Trucker said, “You’re your father’s son,” and Nick pretends he’ll be able to outrun that legacy one day).

Static man talks about Pokemon, about Dragonball Z, tells stories like it’s a love language. Nick watches him out of the corner of his eye while he drives.

They stop for food – ‘Moody’s Family Friendly Diner and Eatery’. It’s the first building they’ve seen so far. The clerk is sarcastic and casually snide enough to make him miss Chris with every fibre of his being. Static man talks about fried chicken, cheerful in this place that does nothing but put Nick on edge. (He is even slower to trust, these days). They leave; they have places to be, and Static man inhales chicken wings in the passenger seat like he needs them to breathe.

They banter. Nick has never had banter before, not really. He started, a little, with Chris, but this is easier somehow. More natural, despite how unnatural everything around them is.

_“I spy with my little eye something beginning with W.”_

_“Is it a window?”_

_“No.”_

_“Is it a weird shimmering cloud simultaneously made up of no colour and every colour at once that seems to shift and retract the more you look at it?”_

_Static man grins. “Uh, yeah.”_

They drive.

They stop for what probably counts as the ‘night’ at Moody’s Family Friendly Motel And Rest Stop. The clerk catches sight of them and sighs very heavily and pointedly. They run from the Trucker, and everywhere they go there is a Moody’s waiting for them, clerk exasperated to see them again.

The car breaks down. Nick climbs onto the roof, presses his back into the warmth of the car and listens to Static Man tinker with something under the hood. He turns his head to watch, cheek pressed against the sun-warmed car.

“Did I ever tell you I’m trans?” asks Nick. Static man pauses, stops fiddling under the bonnet of the car, and straightens to look at him.

“Uh. I don’t think so, dude. That’s chill though. …Uh, so, your pronouns – is that the right way to ask?”

“He/him,” says Nick. “And yes, you’re fine.”

“Okay, cool,” says Static man, and that’s the end of the conversation.

(It’s not until later, when they’re pushing the car into yet another Moody’s carpark, that Static man says, “So you know that kinda makes you like a Pokemon, dude,” and Nick says, “What?”, and Static man says, “Pokemon. So they evolve as they go up in level, right? Change the way they look and get more powerful and shit,” and Nick properly laughs for the first time since Chris left.)

Nicholas thinks about sitting on the floor of his father’s study poring over books, about taking power and folding it into himself. It’s been two years since he killed his father. He wonders if he looks different now, to before all of this, before he knew about magic. He wonders how much he’s changed. (He thinks Static man is right when he points out how Nick has evolved, he’s just not sure that it’s related to gender).

They make pancakes in the kitchen of the Moody’s, Static man practicing his tenuous hold on physical objects by flipping pancakes. Butter and static fizzle softly in unison and Nick watches. The kitchen is warm. Static man grasps the pan’s handle, flicks it up with a twist of his wrist, tries to catch the pancake on the way down. (It joins the Been On The Floor pile and Nick offers the bowl of batter for another attempt). It’s all too easy to settle here, in the warmth of the kitchen, Static man and the clerk sniping cheerfully at each other over the counter.

Nicholas takes a pancake and watches Static man crow as he catches the next one in the pan. He looks at Nick in delight, all flashing teeth and jittering static, and Nick smiles. Somehow, without conscious decision, Static man has ended up on the list of people Nick cares about, folded in close to his core. ( _This_ , he thinks, as Static man grins across the table at him in the warmly lit Moody’s, _this is something_.)

They offer the clerk a way out and she politely refuses. Nicholas thinks he understands. It’s all too easy to grow used to discomfort, to being alone. He thinks today is the first day since Chris left that he hasn’t felt like that.

But the clerk’s choices are her own, and he respects that.

They meet the Trucker again, and when he incapacitates Static man Nick feels his heart jump into his throat.

“I don’t know how to carry him,” he says, and it’s laden with days of travel, with a flashing smile from the passenger seat, with warmth from a Moody’s kitchen as Static man curses over dropped pancakes. _I don’t know how to do this,_ he thinks. Nick is not used to catching feelings and it scares him, how much he cares about Static man.

“You carry him like a person,” says the Trucker, and resolution settles in Nick’s stomach. ~~Static man~~ ~~Arthur~~ Static man is a guy made of static, but he’s just a guy who wants to feel like himself again.

Nick can understand that.

They don’t get a body, in the end. The Trucker tells Nick about his father, about how he hurt people in his careless dismissal of them. Nick isn’t his father. He doesn’t want to forget how to care. He misses his mom, and he misses Chris, and he is never going to stop missing either of them. But there’s a man made of static sitting next to him in the car, staticky hand in his, and there’s a clerk in the back seat, and Nick knows how to string magic out of the universe.

They’ll be okay.

Nicholas builds his home the way he built the rest of him; slowly, carefully, and on his own terms.

**Author's Note:**

> Special shout out of thanks to the discord crew, who answered my questions about Pokemon at 11pm on a Wednesday


End file.
